Kraving Dravka by Zoey Draven

Chapter Six

Two years earlier…

* * *

“Stop,”Valerie whispered, trying to hide her smile but failing.

“Stop what?” Dravka asked, his tone lazy and innocent as he took another bite of his meal, spread out on his bedroom floor.

Valerie was sitting against the wall, her legs straight in front of her, crossed at the ankle. She’d taken off her shoes and her toes twitched whenever Dravka’s gaze alighted on her. She hoped he didn’t notice.

But who was she kidding? This was Dravka. He noticed everything. Especially everything about her.

“Stop doing that,” she said.

“Doing what?” he purred, his voice warm and amused.

“Looking at me!”

His lips curved into a grin, one that sent her heartbeat racing. “Why would I ever want to stop looking at you?” he teased.

Valerie’s cheeks heated and she could do nothing about it. Dravka enjoyed watching her blush. Case in point, a husky laugh escaped him, further heating her face.

“You’re being annoying,” Valerie mumbled, looking away, down to the heaping mounds of food sprawled out on trays across his floor.

Keriv’i only ate two or three times a week, so their meals tended to be gigantic. In order to distract herself from the tingling buzzing that seemed to fill Dravka’s bedroom, she asked, “Did you have a favorite food on Kerivu?”

Dravka’s lips twitched, which told her he knew exactly what she was doing. Changing the subject. Ignoring the tension between them…as they always did. Valerie kept her arms wrapped tightly around herself, her legs pressed together, though more than once, she’d caught Dravka’s gaze on the hem of her black dress, which ended just above her knees.

“My sister made a dish called livuru’ky.”

Valerie repeated softly, “Livuru’ky.”

“Pax,” he rumbled, his eyes flashing. Valerie had the strangest suspicion that he liked hearing his language from her lips.

“What is it?”

He lifted his shoulder in a small shrug, a purely human gesture he’d picked up over the years. Mostly from Valerie.

“It is a meat dish, cooked for weeks, and seasoned with Keriv’i spices.”

“Weeks?” she questioned, raising a brow.

“Pax,” Dravka said. “She would make it for us, for my father and I, a few times a year.”

Valerie bit her lip, regretting bringing up the question entirely. Because Dravka’s grief was something that would never end.

“It’s strange,” he murmured, his gaze dropping to the food before him...the rare steaks, the gummy potatoes in a gravy sauce, the lab-grown Brussels sprouts topped with mushroom shavings, “to think that I’ll never have it again. It’s been over twelve years since I’ve had it…but I don’t think I realized it until now.”

Valerie’s stomach knotted. Her toes twitched.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Dravka, I didn’t mean to—”

“I know,” he murmured, sliding his gaze up to her own. “Of course I know, Val.”

He resumed eating, cutting one of his five steaks into smaller pieces. It was one thing they had in common, their grief. They’d both loved their families so much. And they’d both lost them.

“If we had meat that would survive cooking for weeks,” she whispered, peeking up at him from underneath her lashes, “I would make it for you.”

Valerie felt relief when his low chuckle filled the room. His eyes came to her, those beautiful eyes that she’d always thought resembled dark opals. All blue and green swirls.

“I know you would,” was what he replied. “Maybe one day, you will.”

Valerie’s heart fluttered in her chest. She swallowed. “What do you mean?”

The corner of his mouth lifted but his expression was almost hesitant. He didn’t say anything, not a first, but Valerie knew what both of them were thinking.

Then Dravka finally rumbled out, “We could settle on a neutral colony.”

Valerie’s breath hitched.

“All of us, I mean,” Dravka amended. “Away from Everton. Away from the New Earth colonies’ reach.”

Valerie’s eyes slid down to her lap and watched as her fingers twisted together. Her fingernails were bitten down, a nervous, anxious habit that made Madame Allegria look at her with disgust.

“We could have a home. Somewhere with land, somewhere quiet. You could have a garden,” he murmured quietly. “I would build one for you.”

Longing lodged in her chest, even as her nose began to sting. She was fascinated with growing things. Back on Genesis, her mother had managed to acquire seeds from the Trader Market, seeds of a type of flower that had grown on Old Earth called a daisy.

They had planted one together in a little pot of soil in their little home. Valerie had often watched it for long hours, swearing that she could see a little bit of movement beneath the soil. Everything on the New Earth colonies was grown in labs. So it was a forbidden excitement to have seeds of something and to try to grow life from them.

The daisy had grown, slowly. Valerie had lovingly watched it and her mother had lovingly watched her. Valerie had stroked its yellow petals with gentleness and gave it a little bit of water every day. They kept it next to a small window in their apartment, so it might get a sliver of light every afternoon—though the sun was only a projection.

All too soon, the petals started to wither. They began to fall into the little nest of soil. Slowly, Valerie had watched it die.

It made her sad but it didn’t deter her. Valerie recognized that beauty was fleeting. And with enough tending, she could make something grow again.

They were some of her favorite memories, growing things in little pots—sometimes cups or jars or pieces of scrap her mother had found—until their home had been littered with them.

After her mother died, however, Valerie had never grown anything again. Not that she could find seeds on Everton anyways. But she would’ve liked to try. If only to remember…

Dravka remembered all this. He remembered because she’d told him over a year ago, just one of their whispered late afternoon conversations.

And he offered to build her a garden. Just the thought brought her such a sharp, aching, stinging kind of joy.

“You would?” she whispered, meeting his eyes once more.

“Pax,” he murmured, holding her gaze, never looking away. “As big as you would want. You could grow your daisies. Your vegetables. Your plants.”

Valerie smiled. It was a strange sensation, to feel such sadness and longing and excitement over his words. Because she knew that it would never happen…but it was nice to dream that it could. It was nice to dream of a life with Dravka, away from Everton, where they might be free to…

To be with one another. To love one another, openly. To touch him when she wanted. To smile at him. To know that he was safe and happy and free.

She decided to play along.

“And what would you want?” she whispered, her toe twitching with her bold question. “What would you want for our quiet little home with the garden that you’d build for me? A working area for all your inventions you would create?”

Dravka had told her about his hobby when he lived on Kerivu. He’d worked as a trader, within the city limits of Kerivu’s capital, to keep his sister and his father supported. But during his work, he came across little trinkets and spare parts that he would bring home and craft into something new.

He’d told her of a light he’d made for his sister, made of piping and shards of broken glass. When lit, it spun slowly and reflected shimmering stars through the glass, onto the walls of her room.

Dravka looked at Valerie now, his gaze intense and steady. She swallowed, feeling something in the room change, as it always did, and warning bells went off in her head even as her belly fluttered.

“Isn’t it obvious what I want?” he rasped.

Valerie’s lips parted at the guttural emotion she heard in his voice. All ragged and raw.

“Dravka,” she whispered, the heat in her belly blooming, trailing over her, warming the room and making her shift in her place on the floor.

She saw his gaze drop to her lips and she couldn’t help but nervously lick them, knowing that they were entering dangerous territory, as they often did. Those opal eyes flared to life, his pupils visibly dilating in the low light of the room. Valerie shivered at that look, her nipples pebbling to tight peaks underneath the band of her bra. She hoped her dress was thick enough to hide the evidence of it.

With a rough sound in the back of his throat, he tore his eyes away and silence dropped over them. All she could hear was her heartbeat in her ears, frantic and desperate.

“I want…” he started after a moment, his head tilted towards the wall in front of him, where the sole window in his room was.

It was getting dark. The shadows across the room were deepening. Clients would be arriving soon and Valerie would need to be downstairs to greet them with a smile on her face, as much as it shredded her insides. In a few hours, Dravka would be inside another human woman, releasing his seed inside her, and it made her want to crawl in his arms and never let him go.

But she couldn’t.

“I want a lot of things, Val,” Dravka finally finished.

She sobered.

What went unspoken was that he would never find what he wanted on Everton. Not while he was working in Madame Allegria’s brothel, not while he was one of the infamous Krave.

Their dream was just that. A dream.

And sometimes, they both didn’t want to wake up from it.

She wanted a home with him. She wanted to be safe and free with him. She wanted him to build her a garden so she could spend long afternoons with her hands deep in fragrant, black soil. She wanted to watch him make new things from old things and watch his hands and his mind create something beautiful. She wanted a family, she wanted children with him—children with beautiful opal eyes like their father.

She wanted to love him without feeling shame for it.

“Me too,” Valerie whispered, blinking back her tears so he wouldn’t see them.